Progress Report & Whole Piece

I finished the piece that I started yesterday and feel like I’m on a little more of an even keel right now, which is good. I haven’t written much today — just 280 words, but I think I’ll get a few more words out. I’m more or less feeling okay to write, I just don’t know how to start things right now. My brain has ideas but not enough mental energy behind it to commit them to paper. I need to write one more LJI entry, too, but I have until Monday. So there’s that, at least.

My whole idol piece, for your perusal:

***

You stare at the rings before you. The engagement ring is a little oblong, the corner of it squeezing in unlike the rest of the smooth curves that makes up its shape. Each ring, handmade just for you. A custom design with both of your birthstones sitting squarely in the center.

The wedding band is a little better made. The ring itself is a circle and not misshapen, its stones still retaining some of their shine after six years. Again, your birthstones line up, one after the other, three stones in total.

Despite the flaw in the one, the two bands line up well on your finger. They fit; they always have. They sometimes move independently of one another, but they always manage to come back again in the center. A complete set, one made just for you.

She asked that you don’t just throw them away.

You wouldn’t, but you don’t want them, either. They serve as a reminder, one so painful it’s difficult to breathe with your heavy heart crushing your lungs the way that it does. She had them designed just for you. Just like how you had always felt she was designed just for you.

Like the rings, you fit together, despite those flaws. Because of those flaws. At least, you thought you did. You thought she did, too.

Except those same flaws sometimes push you apart, some gaps larger than others. The rings are no different, one sometimes moving independently from the other. Sometimes they refuse to sit just right. Sometimes they refuse to move together.

You thought that was okay. That the imperfections were what made the pair so perfect, so complete. She disagrees. She disagrees, and you want so desperately for her to change her mind. You want to cling, to hold on with your fingertips and mar her skin with them, to show her just how much you want this.

You know you can’t. That clinging will only serve to push her further away, that not giving her the distance she craves will only prove to her that this is unhealthy and can’t be fixed. And maybe it can’t. But, goddamnit, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. That she shouldn’t try, one last time, before throwing in the towel for good.

Except the towel’s already been thrown, sitting in the corner and gathering dust. Your rings no longer sit on your finger; they were, instead, surrendered to her, so you wouldn’t simply just throw them away.

You didn’t have the heart to tell her you wouldn’t do that. Not to her.